In its original conception, Myers reminded me, “NPR really was an institution devoted to preserving cultural treasures. By the time I left, that vision had vanished, a victim of multiculturalism, postculturalism, autoculturalism, and other fancies.” Myers fondly recalls bygone NPR series like “A Sense of Place: Sound Portraits of Twentieth Century Humanists”—a dozen documentaries on longhairs like James Joyce, Igor Stravinsky, and W.E.B. Du Bois.

“ ‘A Sense of Place’ would be unimaginable at NPR today,” Myers says. Today at NPR, as elsewhere,culture means pop culture. With occasional gestures toward jazz, NPR music is the rock music of aging children; the visual arts begin and end with movies and TV, though stage plays will sometimes rouse attention if their themes are sufficiently progressive. This falling off isn’t the fault of the programmers alone, needless to say. In its decline NPR has tumbled in tandem with the tastes of its target audience—affluent white people with meaningless college degrees who weren’t educated into an appreciation for richer music and art and who, accordingly, find the whole cultural-patrimony thing intimidating, hence vaguely off-putting, and finally a snooze.

One of Myers’s recurring themes is the ways in which the dumbing down of the general culture has infected American Christianity and conservatism. These are two spheres where we might expect the work of “preserving cultural treasures” to be taken up. Yet wander into a Mass or worship service in any suburban Catholic or Protestant church and you’ll hear “praise songs” that might have been lifted from Sesame Street or, if the service is High Church, the soundtrack of Phantom of the Opera. It’s hard to believe this is the same religion that inspired Bach and Palestrina, whose choral works are no more familiar to the average pastor or parishioner than the chants at a Kikuyu circumcision ceremony. The liturgy, what’s left of it, is either pedestrian or absurd. (The Shepherd who used to maketh you to lie down in green pastures will now, if you’re a Catholic, “in verdant pastures give you repose.”) Among clergy no less than the laity, a desire for beauty and reflection is deemed prissy and dull.

“I’ve always thought that beautiful art was a great apologetic resource,” Myers says. Beauty is the chief attribute of God, said Jonathan (not Bob) Edwards. “Beauty points to a Creator.” Yet the church, Myers says, “capitulates more and more to the culture of entertainment.”

“It’s a way of keeping market share. But they’re digging their own grave. There’s a short-term benefit, but in the long term the kinds of cultural resources they need to be faithful to the Gospel won’t be there.”

More:

Steeped in journalism of this sort, Myers didn’t see why an orthodox religious believer couldn’t edit an intellectually wide-ranging magazine and attract a similarly minded readership.

“I had Christian friends on Capitol Hill,” he says, “and when they came home from work in the evening, they’d watch MacNeil/Lehrer,” the earlier incarnation of today’s hyphenless NewsHour. “It would never occur to them to get their news from The 700 Club. They would read the Atlantic, never one of the Christian magazines. I thought, why does the secular culture have Harper’s and the Wilson Quarterly and MacNeil/Lehrer, and all that Christians have are these kinds of pop-entertainment, jokey, show-biz cultural outlets?”

Read the whole thing. If you are an intellectually-oriented, small-o orthodox Christian, or any kind of cultural traditionalist, you simply have to subscribe to the Journal. It’s the kind of thing that, when you find out exists, you can’t believe you went so long without knowing that something this smart, searching, and consistently provocative was available. Though the program is a series of interviews with scholars and intellectuals (not all of them Christian, or even religious), and not at all an altar-call show, a friend of mine once told me that the intelligence of MHAJ brought him back to the practice of Christianity, and is one of the chief sources of his ongoing spiritual formation. Listen to one full episode of the Journal, and if you’re like me, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it.

If you’ve never subscribed, you can sample an issue of the Journalhere. If you are a subscriber, why not consider buying a gift subscription for a friend? I just bought an MP3 subscription for our pastor. Hey, it’s Russian Orthodox Christmas on Monday…

UPDATE: From a reader and longtime Journal subscriber, in the comboxes:

I came to the realization that for what I count as my ongoing education and formation I owe more to Myers and his Journal than I do to any of the three institutions of higher ed that I have attended and am now presently attending. This is not so much to disparage these institutions as it is to praise what Myers accomplishes in his Journal. (And consider the value when we compare costs!)

As I was going through those old volumes, again and again I realized that some author the had been influential in my own thinking or some idea that had been particularly striking or stimulating, to say nothing of the cultivation of a sensibility that would be difficult to articulate — more often than not these where first encountered in a Mars Hill interview.

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17 Responses to The Great Ken Myers

I received a gift subscription to the Journal around 2000 or 2001. I’ve been without it for only a few months since. Recently, I remembered an interview that I wanted to revisit and began to go through the old tapes (!) and CD’s and burned CD’s (after I switched to the MP3 format). As I was doing so I had an epiphany of sorts. I came to the realization that for what I count as my ongoing education and formation I owe more to Myers and his Journal than I do to any of the three institutions of higher ed that I have attended and am now presently attending. This is not so much to disparage these institutions as it is to praise what Myers accomplishes in his Journal. (And consider the value when we compare costs!)

As I was going through those old volumes, again and again I realized that some author the had been influential in my own thinking or some idea that had been particularly striking or stimulating, to say nothing of the cultivation of a sensibility that would be difficult to articulate — more often than not these where first encountered in a Mars Hill interview.

Great, but hating on NPR is a little unfair. I mean, they suck in various ways, but just last week a story of theirs led me to a beautiful hour-long concert curated on their website of British renaissance sacred vocal music. My tax dollars at work!

Well, Fran, what would make a publication “Christian”? Honesty, I would think. Fulfilling an important social role. Covering stories that would interest Christians and, perhaps, highlight concerns of the religion. Or would they need to proselytize? Rant and rave? Scam old ladies out of their cat-food money?

You are so right! I’m a presbyterian minister and regularly tell people that they can learn to think Christianly if they will let Ken help them. Kudos to Andrew Ferguson for the article and to you for calling a broader group’s attention to it. I have cassettes and CDs in my study with the Marsh Hill Audio logo. Tolle Audite!

In its decline NPR has tumbled in tandem with the tastes of its target audience—affluent white people with meaningless college degrees who weren’t educated into an appreciation for richer music and art and who, accordingly, find the whole cultural-patrimony thing intimidating, hence vaguely off-putting, and finally a snooze.

That was good for a chuckle. I hope that’s narrow minded Weekly Standard pontificating rather than a paraphrasing of Ken Myers.

I was born and raised into this “richer” high prestige older culture. It isn’t intimidating so much as that it’s populated with a lot of snobs. And its ugly secret is that there simply isn’t as much There there as pretended, its forms limited in what they can portray of human inward development (assuming that there’s significance to that). The best artists of today don’t use its forms or theories because there’s no more to be obtained by them.

NPR wasn’t founded to be an aural museum or a dusty conservative humanities department’s radio station. It is a representation of the present public culture, neither populist nor seriously elitist, whose primary effort is to at least appear intelligent if not be intelligent. Sometimes it succeeds. It’s no easy thing to do in a time in which the culture is one big Neurath’s Boat.

He must have a different NPR channel than we do. Ours regularly plays classical, folk and old time music and music from around the world. I am guessing that the humor in Car Talk and Lake Woebegone is too complex for whomever wrote this, or they really dont listen to it and are making stuff up.

He must have a different NPR channel than we do. Ours regularly plays classical, folk and old time music and music from around the world. I am guessing that the humor in Car Talk and Lake Woebegone is too complex for whomever wrote this, or they really dont listen to it and are making stuff up.

I think it’s worth pointing that there is a difference between “NPR” and “public radio”. “Public radio” is a general term for radio stations that are, in part, supported by listener donations, but which may also receive some funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR, National Public Radio, is a specific corporation that produces and/or distributes a number of shows that are made available to public radio stations that have chosen to affiliate with it. Some of these programs are well known and have high public radio listenership, such as the news programs Morning Edition and All Things Considered. NPR also produces and/or distributes other news and arts and special-interest programs, such as Fresh Air and Car Talk

Most public radio stations also run programs that are produced and/or distributed by other organizations, in addition to those produced/distributed by National Public Radio. To name two, A Prairie Home Companion is produced by Prairie Home Productions and distributed by American Public Media; This American Life is produced by Chicago Public Media and distributed by Public Radio International. Neither American Public Media nor Public Radio International is the same organization as National Public Radio, though their shows are generally heard on NPR-affiliate stations. As I understand it, each individual public radio station determines what programming it will carry, depending on its budget and the interests of its audience.

That critique of NPR sure is timely on a night when All Things Considered ran a piece on a silly, self-flattering “feminist” punk band. Then again, Susan Stamberg still reports on art exhibitions, many stations still broadcasts the Metropolitan Opera, and Garrison Keillor occasionally books the an opera singer, choir, or orchestra.

Just this Friday, one of the bits of filler music they have on NPR during my commute home was the beginning of “Gut Feeling” by Devo. It’s a very nice piece of music, one of my favorites by Devo, but boy, it sure makes an early 40-something like me feel OLD. Punk or “New Wave” or whatever Devo was supposed to be is now NPR fodder. Someone call Ken Burns and his Sepia-inator and get a documentary started, STAT!

I am 100% with you Rod on mha. Without a doubt it has been an irreplaceable source of reflection.

As for npr, I have a love-hate relationship with it. This American Life, Prairie Home Companion, etc are great but undeniably liberal (nauseatingly liberal in the case of Terry Gross) in their outlook. Still, the form of presenting the news in a calm and non-sensational way is unfortunately rare and worth putting up with the progressive bias at npr.

Thank you Rod, for introducing me to this. It is consistently great. Ken is one of the best interviewers I’ve heard: he lets his subject go on for a while, and then asks a smart question in light of what’s been said, or where the conversation should go. This is so rare these days. And it really allows the subjects to shine.

I just got my younger brother a subscription for Christmas, because we tend to have conversations about these issues. It is a bargain by any measure.

Rod, my only regret is that this post was superseded by other great posts. I wish everyone could hear MHA. I often think that if my liberal colleagues would listen to Mars Hill, they would overcome their prejudice that conservative Christians are anti-intellectual (although, we know from MHA that many are).

I can’t tell you how many conversations I have where I say, “I heard on a Mars Hill podcast…” I can’t say Mars Hill converted me, but it has changed my mind and opened my mind too many times to count. Thank you Ken Meyers!

BTW, I’d bet that Ken Meyers is some form of conservative Presbyterian. He certainly seems to be from some solid Reformed tradition.

When I was with Ken back in October he told me this interview was going to be published in The Weekly Standard. Like anyone else that listens to MHA I find it hard to believable that this resource is not better known. I do know that there have been times when Ken has wondered whether or not he is making any difference–please let him know that you appreciate the program. Some times he feels like he is talking to himself. BTW–Ken went to Westminster Seminary but he is an Anglican now and the music director at his church in Virginia.